A few days ago, Andrew arranged the donation of a ZBuilder ulTra 3d resin printer to PS1. Since Andrew has been working on small a table-top 3-d resin printer using the Raspberry Pi and nanoDLP, it seemed natural to try the nanoDLP controller on the big machine.

As far as we know this retrofit is a new use case for the RPi.

I found the build platform motor leads and Andrew connected them to the nanoDLP system. With a bit of fiddling, the platform started to move as expected. Meanwhile Andrew had a good start on getting the projector to run, and before we were really ready, the essential system components seemed to work. (In the pic below, you can see the the Raspberry Pi logo displaying on the build platform.)

It’s already clear that there are lots of details that need addressing, but those problems seem surmountable.

———————-

Andrew Camardella camardea at gmail) is a contract industrial designer and digital fabricator. He works with companies and individuals conceptualizing, creating, and managing new products, taking ideas from sketch to prototype to finished product. He is an expert in the application of 3D processes and technologies to traditional design methods.

NERP is not exclusively Raspberry Pi, the small computer and embedded systems interest group at Pumping Station:One in Chicago. NERP meets every other Monday at 7pm at Pumping Station:One, 3519 N. Elston Ave. in Chicago. Find NERP and Pumping Station:One at

Doors open at 6:30pm.
NERP is free and open to the public.
Ed Bennett ed @ kinetics and electronics com
Tags: electronics, embedded, NERP, Open Source,
raspberry pi, hackerspace, Beagle Bone, Pumping Station One

NERP is not exclusively Raspberry Pi, the small computer and embedded systems interest group at Pumping Station:One in Chicago. NERP meets every other Monday at 7pm at Pumping Station:One, 3519 N. Elston Ave. in Chicago.

April 4th through 6th, PS1’s Drew Fustini attended the Open Internet of Things and Embedded Linux Conference (OpenIoT & ELC 2016) in San Diego. Since embedded Linux powers pretty much all the OS-capable single board computers and computer modules that we see at NERP, we’re eager to hear Drew’s insights on how current advancements and innovation in embedded Linux and hardware will help us at NERP make cool stuff that nobody’s thought of yet.

NERP is not exclusively Raspberry Pi, the small computer and embedded systems interest group at Pumping Station:One in Chicago. NERP meets every other Monday at 7pm at Pumping Station:One, 3519 N. Elston Ave. in Chicago.

Bonnie King is a Linux Administrator at Fermilab and works on the Scientific Linux distribution. At Nerp tonight, Bonnie will give us a tour of systemd. If you work with embedded linux, this is must have, must know material.

The architecture of systemd as it is used by Tizen. Several components, including telephony, bootmode, dlog and tizen service, are from Tizen and are not components of systemd

“Linux” is the kernel of an operating system. You generally can’t see it, feel it or touch it directly, but you know it’s there by what it does. At boot, the kernel launches “init”, the process with Process ID number 1. Everything else is started by by init. On my computer, init, PID 1 is /lib/systemd/systemd. systemd is “new”, sort of. It’s been around for several years, but has recently taken over lots of core system functions that have been provided by some very traditional Unix-based tools and utilities. When I look under the hood of my Ubuntu system, it looks very different than it did a couple of years ago. What goes for the desktop goes for embedded, too.

from http://freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/
“systemd is a suite of basic building blocks for a Linux system. It provides a system and service manager that runs as PID 1 and starts the rest of the system. systemd provides aggressive parallelization capabilities, uses socket and D-Bus activation for starting services, offers on-demand starting of daemons, keeps track of processes using Linux control groups, supports snapshotting and restoring of the system state, maintains mount and automount points and implements an elaborate transactional dependency-based service control logic. systemd supports SysV and LSB init scripts and works as a replacement for sysvinit. Other parts include a logging daemon, utilities to control basic system configuration like the hostname, date, locale, maintain a list of logged-in users and running containers and virtual machines, system accounts, runtime directories and settings, and daemons to manage simple network configuration, network time synchronization, log forwarding, and name resolution.”

A number of influential people in the Linux community have strong philosophical and practical differences with the design of systemd and the way in which it’s become ubiquitous across distros. Nevertheless, mainstream Linux continues to move toward systemd and away from System V and BSD init. systemd is installed by default in Ububntu since ver 15.04. (April 2015). If you work with Linux at a low level, for instance in embedded applications, a knowledge of systemd is a must have.

Find NERP and Pumping Station:One at

NERP – Not Exclusively Raspberry Pi

Chicago, IL 674members

NERP is Not Exclusively Raspberry Pi, the small computer and embedded systems interest group at Pumping Station One in Chicago. (Chicago’s oldest and finest hackerspace.) NERP…

NERP is not exclusively Raspberry Pi, the small computer and embedded systems interest group at Pumping Station:One in Chicago. NERP meets every other Monday at 7pm at Pumping Station:One, 3519 N. Elston Ave. in Chicago.

Art is one of the fundamental ways humans express themselves and it occurs in every culture going back to the beginnings of humanity. Art therapy is a valued tool that bridges the disciplines of psychology and art and has been undertaken by Iraqi war veterans, victims of violence and other traumas.

But what about individuals whose limitations prevent them from holding a paint brush or manipulating clay? Haddon Pearson is a local creative type who is working with a child psychologist from the University of Chicago to develop systems that will enable people with limited mobility to make art. He will discuss some of the technologies and ideas that they are exploring to lower the bar for people with limited agency to express themselves.

The technology we’ll visit tonight is a Makeblock plotter that will potentially serve as the motion actuator for 2-d graphical output. The plotter is not feeling well at the moment. NERP aims to fix it, but first we need to understand the hardware and software that runs it. Andy Sowa will lead a live troubleshooting and learning session with the collaboration of the NERP Meetup.

Find NERP and Pumping Station:One at
Meetup NERP-Not-Exclusively-Raspberry-Pi/
and
http://pumpingstationone.org/

Doors open at 6:30pm.
NERP is free and open to the public.
Ed Bennett ed @ kinetics and electronics com
Tags: electronics, embedded, NERP, Open Source,
raspberry pi, hackerspace, Beagle Bone, Pumping Station One

NERP is not exclusively Raspberry Pi, the small computer and embedded systems interest group at Pumping Station:One in Chicago. NERP meets every other Monday at 7pm at Pumping Station:One, 3519 N. Elston Ave. in Chicago.

Charles Kwiatkowski has worked in industry and academia since 1991. He enjoys learning and discussion on NERPish topics. If possible, he would live across the street from PS1.

Tonight Charles will introduce us to the new Raspberry Pi Zero. The fun thing about following the small embedded market is the speed at which things change are changing. When the Basic Stamp was the only “accessible” microcontroller for hobbyists it cost $50. The Stamp was king of the hill for a decade. Things change faster now.

Comparisons between different embedded platforms is almost always apples and oranges, but price is the place people usually start. The RPi Zero’s retail price is $5. So there.

NERP is not exclusively Raspberry Pi, the small computer and embedded systems interest group at Pumping Station:One in Chicago. NERP meets every other Monday at 7pm at Pumping Station:One, 3519 N. Elston Ave. in Chicago.

NERP is not exclusively Raspberry Pi, the small computer and embedded systems interest group at Pumping Station:One in Chicago. NERP meets every other Monday at 7pm at Pumping Station:One, 3519 N. Elston Ave. in Chicago.

Syed Karim is the founder of Outernet, which is a satellite-based digital library service. Outernet takes content from the web and broadcasts it from six different geostationary satellites. The file delivery service is free to receive and most of Outernet’s code is open source. Plans to build a Raspberry Pi-based receiver can be found here.

“I’ll have a few slides, more for context, but would prefer if presentation was more of a conversation than a presentation. I’ll go over the general concept, content chain, and various types of receivers, including the newly designed Beaglebone Black derivative, which includes an on board DVB-S tuner, wifi module, and LiFePO4 charging circuit”

NERP is not exclusively Raspberry Pi, the small computer and embedded systems interest group at Pumping Station:One in Chicago. NERP meets every other Monday at 7pm at Pumping Station:One, 3519 N. Elston Ave. in Chicago.

NERP is not exclusively Raspberry Pi, the small computer and embedded systems interest group at Pumping Station:One in Chicago. NERP meets every other Monday at 7pm at Pumping Station:One, 3519 N. Elston Ave. in Chicago.

Tucker Tomlinson is a familiar face around the shops at Pumping Station One. He’s also a Postdoctoral Scholar in the Laboratory of Lee Miller in the Department of Physiology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. Tucker’s work in the Limb Motor Control Lab* focuses on neural interfaces for advanced prosthetics.

Data acquisition systems used to record neuron activity typically work with lots of channels of analog-to-digital converters that measure tiny voltages and currents very fast. In Tucker’s words:

“I’ll be discussing the problem of recording directly from neurons in the brains of monkeys and humans. There will be a few slides and videos to help describe the basic science and technical challenges that we face when tackling this problem, but the session will be mostly informal discussion driven by whatever the audience finds interesting.”

NERP is not exclusively Raspberry Pi, the small computer and embedded systems interest group at Pumping Station:One in Chicago. NERP meets every other Monday at 7pm at Pumping Station:One, 3519 N. Elston Ave. in Chicago.

NERP is not exclusively Raspberry Pi, the small computer and embedded systems interest group at Pumping Station:One in Chicago. NERP meets every other Monday at 7pm at Pumping Station:One, 3519 N. Elston Ave. in Chicago.

The ESP8266 module has come up several times in discussions at NERP, and it keeps getting better. Tonight at NERP, Jay Hopkins will tell us about some of his recent findings as he revisits the esp8266. In Jay’s own words:

“The esp8266 is an ultra low cost module (sub $10) with an 80Mhz 32 bit processor, up to 4 MB flash memory, 100k of ram and 802.11 radio. What sets the module apart from other ultra low cost modules is the inclusion of an 802.11 b/g/n radio and in firmware the IP stack for connectivity in the IoT (internet of things).

“At NERP we will be looking at the tools available to build firmware for the ‘8266. Both microPython, lua and the arduino IDE are available for programming the ‘8266.”

NERP is not exclusively Raspberry Pi, the small computer and embedded systems interest group at Pumping Station:One in Chicago. NERP meets every other Monday at 7pm at Pumping Station:One, 3519 N. Elston Ave. in Chicago.

Tonight at NERP, professional maker/hacker/DIY’er Bart Dring will introduce Cypress Semiconductor’s PSOC IC’s. PSOCs are odd beasts. They’ve been around since 2002, but there seems to be a growing interest in their peculiar mix of capabilities.

NERP is not exclusively Raspberry Pi, the small computer and embedded systems interest group at Pumping Station:One in Chicago. NERP meets every other Monday at 7pm at Pumping Station:One, 3519 N. Elston Ave. in Chicago.

Also:
In April Steve Laya from Eliete Electronic Engineering visited NERP to acquaint us with the process of getting FCC certification for a new product. I’m not sure how he did it, but he made the subject entertaining if not a little bit fun. Steve was kind enough to send his slides so that we could make them available. The pdf is here. Elite-FCC-Presentation-NERP-4-13-2015

Find NERP and Pumping Station:One at
http://www.meetup.com NERP-Not-Exclusively-Raspberry-Pi/
and
http://pumpingstationone.org/
Doors open at 6:30pm.
NERP is free and open to the public.
Ed Bennett ed @ kinetics and electronics com
Tags: electronics, embedded, NERP, Open Source,
raspberry pi, hackerspace, Beagle Bone, Element14, Pumping Station One